Well, that explains a lot

John Dick, regarding the zealots who took a vow not to eat or drink until they could snuff out Paul's life:

From this transaction we learn how much conscience may be debauched by the principles of a false religion. Superstition will sanctify the foulest actions in the eyes of its deluded votaries. There is no atrocity, however revolting to the natural feelings, and the unsophisticated moral sentiments of mankind, to which the mind may not be reconciled, if it have been previously persuaded that the deed will be acceptable to God. The horrors of the inquisition, and the barbarous cruelties exercised upon the friends of truth by the Antichristian Church, are examples of crimes committed in the name of God, and mistaken for acts of holy zeal. Men have imagined, that they never stood higher in the favour of Heaven, than at the moment when they were displaying the malignity of demons, and the ferocity of savages.